Panzee, a copia-like retrotransposon from the grain legume, pigeonpea ( Cajanus cajan L.).

We report the isolation and characterization of a copia-like retrotransposon, Panzee, from pigeonpea ( Cajanus cajan). The 4947-bp Panzee element is AT rich (60%) and the integrated element is flanked by a target-site duplication of 5 bp. The structure of Panzee is that of a typical LTR-retrotransposon containing long terminal repeats (LTRs) which flank its internal region. The 5' LTR is 372 bp in length and the 3' LTR is 383 bp long. Both LTRs start with 5'-TG and end with CA-3' and have 4-bp terminal inverted repeats. The internal region between the LTRs contains two priming sites for DNA synthesis: the first, a 12-bp primer binding site complementary to initiator methionyl tRNA, is located adjacent to the 3' end of the 5' LTR and the other, a 12-bp polypurine tract lies just upstream to the 5' end of the 3' LTR. The putative polyprotein shows homology to all the proteins encoded by LTR retrotransposons, i.e. group-associated antigen ( gag), proteinase, endonuclease, reverse transcriptase (RT) and ribonuclease H (RNase H). However, the cloned copy of the element contains four frameshifts and a premature stop codon in its protein-coding domain. Genomic Southern hybridization experiments using probes derived from three different regions of the element show that Panzee or Panzee-related elements are present in high copy numbers in the pigeonpea genome. Analysis of transgenic tobacco plants containing the LTR:GUS construct shows that the 5' LTR of Panzee drives gene expression in this heterologous system in a tissue-specific manner. A phylogenetic tree constructed using reverse transcriptase sequences places Panzee in the copia group of retrotransposons.